eChaser: October 1999


	Society of Professional Journalists, Fort Worth Professional Chapter Public Relations Society of America, Greater Fort Worth Chapter International Association of Business Communicators, Fort Worth Chapter eChaser archive [graphics format] October 1999 ORNERY GRACE AND A TRUE TEXAS SOUL: JERRY FLEMMONS, 1936-1999 by Mike Blackman Jerry Flemmons, who died Sept. 17 at age 63, probably did more than anyone over the last three decades to keep the Star-Telegram's head above the murky waters of newspaper mediocrity. He did it with his writing. Imaginative, precise. He did it with his editing. The travel section he edited for more than 20 years was one of the nation's most honored. He did it with versatility. The UT tower shootings, the Wichita Falls tornado, the mythical Fort Worth Strangers -- all exhibit the fluid, understated Flemmons touch. He did it with his prickly personality. There was never an assignment he couldn't fault, a new boss who wasn't flawed, a page one that didn't mystify. But, my, how he overcame. Finally, he did it with his heart. Read his stories, you know what I mean; talk to the young ones in our business who sought his guidance; ask his friends, who embraced his gentle comfort as an antidote for every grief du jour. In the end, it was his heart -- the second one, the teen-aged boy's ticker transplanted into Jerry's chest when the first one gave out -- that betrayed him. Jerry could appreciate the irony. Jerry had his chances to leave the Star-Telegram, which in the early '70s one national trade publication rated among the 10 worst metro dailies in America. The paper wasn't that bad, but given its scant resources, it probably should have been. Thanks to resilient talents like Flemmons -- actually, the paper could strut out a number of spirited writers and editors, respected journalists all -- the newspaper had its proud moments. Yet the reputation was mostly otherwise, and the turnstiles spun as good people left for brighter lights and 10 more bucks a week. Jerry stayed because he felt at home -- at the Star-Telegram, in Fort Worth. Both, he'd tell you, were products of his beloved land, West Texas. To Jerry and his writing, this was of paramount importance. Not that Jerry was provincial or lacking for adventure; after all, his dream job was travel. When you can relax with friends on the Left Bank and sip champagne on the company tab, well, somehow that makes a Fort Worth mortgage palatable. Remember, too, he grew up and quarterbacked in Stephenville. Some readers preferred his columns, which he wrote for The Weekly Review after he retired. Some liked Texas Siftings, for years a monthly celebration of all things Texan. Locals praised the readable and entertaining "Amon," the biography of the Star-Telegram's flamboyant founder, Amon G. Carter. But most of us just liked anything with his name on top. Grocery list or bail bond application -- if Jerry's hand touched it, you read it. Anthology editors loved his 1967 Christmas tale of an old man, a little girl and a rag doll. A masterpiece of language, simplicity and technique, it holds inspiration for any budding writer. We all knew it really was a love story, but you'd never hear Jerry say it. Art Chapman's superb obituary on Jerry reminded of another transcendental effort -- America's cuddliest baseball team, ever, the Fort Worth Strangers. As Chapman recorded, " ... in less than three weeks, this gritty little band of sporting misfits stumbled and bumbled its way into the World Series. Old-timers still remember some of the Strangers' more prominent players, such as Larrupin' Lou Merkle, Milo Candidi and One-Gear Gyro -- whose every pitch was clocked at 98.0.'' Various editors tried in September '79 to interest Jerry in the project, which ultimately would gain us more fame, if you want to call it that, than any Pulitzer Prize. Jerry was indignant that he was even asked, thought the idea ludicrous and far beneath his talents. Then early one morning, he dropped some sample stories on assistant managing editor Henry Holcomb's desk. Holcomb tossed them to me, saying something like, "Blackman, see if these make sense.'' Did they ever. The next three weeks brought a unique experience in journalism for everybody at the paper. The Strangers seized center stage across the land, even generated acclaim abroad, and culminated in three laudatory minutes on Walter Cronkite's news. And it was all fiction. Just one big pack of lies. When Jerry was cleaning out his desk in '97, he unloaded several boxes of junk on me. "You may want to keep these,'' he said. I didn't get around to opening them until months later, when I found several dozen copies of the Strangers sections, all the stories reprinted in one edition. Jerry's health was failing during this time and he was down in Houston again, insulting some of the world's foremost medical minds. For two hours I sat reading Jerry's stories, straight through. I never told him, but at the end, I noticed my breathing had become uneven and my throat had tightened a little. I had become consumed by the Strangers story, had taken Jerry's loopy castoffs dearly to heart, and I was saddened that their season was over. They had become my friends, and I knew that Jerry wasn't ever bringing them back for a visit. Nobody put a lump in your throat like Jerry. ===================================== STRAIGHT STUFF 'The Church Shootings: a Lesson in Crisis Coverage' Some called the media response thorough and compassionate. Some called it overkill. You can have your say when five media pros -- Kathy Vetter, FW Star-Telegram managing editor/news; Max Faulkner, the paper's director of photography; public relations director Drenda Witt and senior PR coordinator Debbie Young with the JPS Health Network; and Pat Svacina, the city's public information officer -- lead a discussion on the passion and the process of covering the Sept. 15 tragedy at Wedgwood Baptist Church. * Date: Tuesday, Oct. 19 * Time: mingling 6:30 p.m., food 7, program 7:45 * Place: Holiday Inn at I-30 and Beach Street * Cost: free for the program; to eat, $20 SPJ members, $25 non-members, $10 students and professionals with two years or less experience * Menu: undetermined at press time, but chef Nick promises a delicious meal * RSVP: (817) 877-1171 ---------- Dues News After at least 10 years of rock-bottom-low annual local dues of $10 (that's two happy meals and extra fries), the rate's now $25, effective Nov. 1. Sign up or renew now and save, thrifty shopper. ---------- A Great Opportunity to 'Grow Some Readers' South Hills Elementary School needs tutors for a third-grade corrective reading program. Volunteers -- say, SPJ types -- will spend an hour once or twice a month helping a child boost his reading skills. After 12 hours of training, you schedule yourself from 8:45 to 9:45 a.m. any day, Monday-Friday. Call the chapter's Carmen Goldthwaite, (817) 626-3910. ===================================== PEOPLE & PLACES Chapter member Gene Mitchell has a book coming out in November, "The 13 Year Trial (How Plastic Surgeons Used Corrupt Government & Flesh Eating Bacteria to Disfigure Image of a Fellow Doctor)." Write Gene -- 1709 Martel, Fort Worth 76103 -- on your letterhead and he'll send you a copy free. While FW SPJ was celebrating fall and frijoles on Fort Worth's East Side, chapter member Vicki Novikoff was in Los Angeles being an extra in the upcoming film "Sordid Lives." Played a mourner in a funeral scene. Bet that livens up the beauty shop talk. Chapter member and Renaissance reprobate Alex Burton will appear Saturday, Oct. 2, with song satirist Lu Mitchell at the White Elephant Saloon in the Stockyards. Lu will perform with her band, Catch 23. Burton will perform solo, reading poems and prose, including a section on the travails of reporters taken from "Hack Donovon of the Press and the Purification of Houston." Admission is $15, and the White Elephant will run a cash bar. Miles Moffeit with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram received a fellowship to the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism seminar on "Cities, Suburbs and Beyond." Miles was one of 25 journalists from across the country who gathered Sept. 12-17 at the University of Maryland. ===================================== COMINGS & GOINGS all at the Star-Telegram ... Promotions ... columnist Bob Ray Sanders to vice president and associate editor ... Jennifer Floyd to covering the Stanley Cup champion Dallas Stars; Jennifer grew up watching the St. Louis Blues with her father, Jim, a former government and health reporter for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Exits ... Andrew Backover, three years with the NE business desk, now covering technology for The Denver Post ... Melanie Gerik, formerly on the Arlington Sports Zone copy desk, now on the sports desk at The Palm Beach Post ... Mike Heika, formerly in sports, now with The Dallas Morning News. Shiftings (Flemmons would like that) ... Brigitte Brungardt-Cummings, leaving the Arlington design desk for NE Hometown Star ... Rosanna Ruiz, leaving the La Estrella section for NE Hometown Star. Additions ... Michele Vincze, Arlington Sports Zone, design editor ... Greg Pederson, previously with the Tyler Morning Telegraph; NE news desk ... Calvin Watkins, previously with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review; NE sports, reporter ... recent LSU grad Trae Thompson, previously a correspondent for the Advocate in Baton Rouge; NE sports, reporter. ==================================== BEYOND S.P.J. For writers craving attention on the busiest holiday shopping weekend, the Western Writers of America's National Book Signing Day hits Sundance Square on Saturday, Nov. 27, 1-4 p.m. at Barnes & Noble. "You do not have to write 'western' to come," said local coordinator Carmen Goldthwaite. Authors, call (817) 626-3910 by Oct. 5 to ensure your books being in place for display and window promotions. Feng Shui specialist Karen Ann Tompkins says that each room, building and furniture arrangement creates an environment that is nurturing or harming. She will tell the Oct. 12 Fort Worth IABC luncheon meeting how to use the Oriental art of self-empowerment to "design your life" via simple changes to the home or workplace. RSVP to Shelley Buttgen, (817) 569-4511. ==================================== OVER & OUT / John Dycus You like exclusives? Try this: Ex-Channel 8 news king Tracy Rowlett, now anchor-in-exile at Channel 11, will go behind the scenes at Belo for the SPJ meeting Nov. 16. It will be his first public appearance since waving Belo 'bye. ... The band FoxWell made another of its very public appearances at the September meeting. Never sounded better. For the 10 folks who said they were coming but couldn't make it, sorry, but we have to bill for the meal. ... Our program on the Wedgwood tragedy couldn't wait, so the conflict-of-interest Belo-Mavericks panel intended for October was bumped. It likely will be rescheduled. The chapter established the Jerry Flemmons Scholarship last year. Donations may be sent to P.O. Box 3212, Fort Worth 76113 ... More questions: Ever wonder why S-T people dominate the "Comings & Goings" section? Why Alex Burton keeps showing up for his authoring and now his intonation and diction skills? Because the S-T's Jodi Hudson gathers the newspaper material, that's why, and because Burton keeps sending himself in. There's room for you, too.

Jerry Flemmons, who died Sept. 17 at age 63, probably did more than anyone over the last three decades to keep the Star-Telegram's head above the murky waters of newspaper mediocrity.

He did it with his writing. Imaginative, precise.

He did it with his editing. The travel section he edited for more than 20 years was one of the nation's most honored.

He did it with versatility. The UT tower shootings, the Wichita Falls tornado, the mythical Fort Worth Strangers -- all exhibit the fluid, understated Flemmons touch.

He did it with his prickly personality. There was never an assignment he couldn't fault, a new boss who wasn't flawed, a page one that didn't mystify. But, my, how he overcame.

Finally, he did it with his heart. Read his stories, you know what I mean; talk to the young ones in our business who sought his guidance; ask his friends, who embraced his gentle comfort as an antidote for every grief du jour.

In the end, it was his heart -- the second one, the teen-aged boy's ticker transplanted into Jerry's chest when the first one gave out -- that betrayed him. Jerry could appreciate the irony.

Jerry had his chances to leave the Star-Telegram, which in the early '70s one national trade publication rated among the 10 worst metro dailies in America. The paper wasn't that bad, but given its scant resources, it probably should have been. Thanks to resilient talents like Flemmons -- actually, the paper could strut out a number of spirited writers and editors, respected journalists all -- the newspaper had its proud moments. Yet the reputation was mostly otherwise, and the turnstiles spun as good people left for brighter lights and 10 more bucks a week.

Jerry stayed because he felt at home -- at the Star-Telegram, in Fort Worth. Both, he'd tell you, were products of his beloved land, West Texas. To Jerry and his writing, this was of paramount importance. Not that Jerry was provincial or lacking for adventure; after all, his dream job was travel. When you can relax with friends on the Left Bank and sip champagne on the company tab, well, somehow that makes a Fort Worth mortgage palatable. Remember, too, he grew up and quarterbacked in Stephenville.

Some readers preferred his columns, which he wrote for The Weekly Review after he retired. Some liked Texas Siftings, for years a monthly celebration of all things Texan. Locals praised the readable and entertaining "Amon," the biography of the Star-Telegram's flamboyant founder, Amon G. Carter. But most of us just liked anything with his name on top. Grocery list or bail bond application -- if Jerry's hand touched it, you read it.

Anthology editors loved his 1967 Christmas tale of an old man, a little girl and a rag doll. A masterpiece of language, simplicity and technique, it holds inspiration for any budding writer. We all knew it really was a love story, but you'd never hear Jerry say it.

Art Chapman's superb obituary on Jerry reminded of another transcendental effort -- America's cuddliest baseball team, ever, the Fort Worth Strangers. As Chapman recorded, " ... in less than three weeks, this gritty little band of sporting misfits stumbled and bumbled its way into the World Series. Old-timers still remember some of the Strangers' more prominent players, such as Larrupin' Lou Merkle, Milo Candidi and One-Gear Gyro -- whose every pitch was clocked at 98.0.''

Various editors tried in September '79 to interest Jerry in the project, which ultimately would gain us more fame, if you want to call it that, than any Pulitzer Prize. Jerry was indignant that he was even asked, thought the idea ludicrous and far beneath his talents.

Then early one morning, he dropped some sample stories on assistant managing editor Henry Holcomb's desk. Holcomb tossed them to me, saying something like, "Blackman, see if these make sense.''

Did they ever. The next three weeks brought a unique experience in journalism for everybody at the paper. The Strangers seized center stage across the land, even generated acclaim abroad, and culminated in three laudatory minutes on Walter Cronkite's news.

And it was all fiction. Just one big pack of lies.

When Jerry was cleaning out his desk in '97, he unloaded several boxes of junk on me. "You may want to keep these,'' he said. I didn't get around to opening them until months later, when I found several dozen copies of the Strangers sections, all the stories reprinted in one edition. Jerry's health was failing during this time and he was down in Houston again, insulting some of the world's foremost medical minds.

For two hours I sat reading Jerry's stories, straight through. I never told him, but at the end, I noticed my breathing had become uneven and my throat had tightened a little. I had become consumed by the Strangers story, had taken Jerry's loopy castoffs dearly to heart, and I was saddened that their season was over. They had become my friends, and I knew that Jerry wasn't ever bringing them back for a visit.

Nobody put a lump in your throat like Jerry.

Some called the media response thorough and compassionate. Some called it overkill. You can have your say when five media pros -- Kathy Vetter, FW Star-Telegram managing editor/news; Max Faulkner, the paper's director of photography; public relations director Drenda Witt and senior PR coordinator Debbie Young with the JPS Health Network; and Pat Svacina, the city's public information officer -- lead a discussion on the passion and the process of covering the Sept. 15 tragedy at Wedgwood Baptist Church.

* Cost: free for the program; to eat, $20 SPJ members, $25 non-members, $10 students and professionals with two years or less experience

After at least 10 years of rock-bottom-low annual local dues of $10 (that's two happy meals and extra fries), the rate's now $25, effective Nov. 1. Sign up or renew now and save, thrifty shopper.

South Hills Elementary School needs tutors for a third-grade corrective reading program. Volunteers -- say, SPJ types -- will spend an hour once or twice a month helping a child boost his reading skills. After 12 hours of training, you schedule yourself from 8:45 to 9:45 a.m. any day, Monday-Friday. Call the chapter's Carmen Goldthwaite, (817) 626-3910.

Chapter member Gene Mitchell has a book coming out in November, "The 13 Year Trial (How Plastic Surgeons Used Corrupt Government & Flesh Eating Bacteria to Disfigure Image of a Fellow Doctor)." Write Gene -- 1709 Martel, Fort Worth 76103 -- on your letterhead and he'll send you a copy free.

While FW SPJ was celebrating fall and frijoles on Fort Worth's East Side, chapter member Vicki Novikoff was in Los Angeles being an extra in the upcoming film "Sordid Lives." Played a mourner in a funeral scene. Bet that livens up the beauty shop talk.

Chapter member and Renaissance reprobate Alex Burton will appear Saturday, Oct. 2, with song satirist Lu Mitchell at the White Elephant Saloon in the Stockyards. Lu will perform with her band, Catch 23. Burton will perform solo, reading poems and prose, including a section on the travails of reporters taken from "Hack Donovon of the Press and the Purification of Houston." Admission is $15, and the White Elephant will run a cash bar.

Miles Moffeit with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram received a fellowship to the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism seminar on "Cities, Suburbs and Beyond." Miles was one of 25 journalists from across the country who gathered Sept. 12-17 at the University of Maryland.

Promotions ... columnist Bob Ray Sanders to vice president and associate editor ... Jennifer Floyd to covering the Stanley Cup champion Dallas Stars; Jennifer grew up watching the St. Louis Blues with her father, Jim, a former government and health reporter for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Exits ... Andrew Backover, three years with the NE business desk, now covering technology for The Denver Post ... Melanie Gerik, formerly on the Arlington Sports Zone copy desk, now on the sports desk at The Palm Beach Post ... Mike Heika, formerly in sports, now with The Dallas Morning News.

Shiftings (Flemmons would like that) ... Brigitte Brungardt-Cummings, leaving the Arlington design desk for NE Hometown Star ... Rosanna Ruiz, leaving the La Estrella section for NE Hometown Star.

Additions ... Michele Vincze, Arlington Sports Zone, design editor ... Greg Pederson, previously with the Tyler Morning Telegraph; NE news desk ... Calvin Watkins, previously with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review; NE sports, reporter ... recent LSU grad Trae Thompson, previously a correspondent for the Advocate in Baton Rouge; NE sports, reporter.

For writers craving attention on the busiest holiday shopping weekend, the Western Writers of America's National Book Signing Day hits Sundance Square on Saturday, Nov. 27, 1-4 p.m. at Barnes & Noble. "You do not have to write 'western' to come," said local coordinator Carmen Goldthwaite. Authors, call (817) 626-3910 by Oct. 5 to ensure your books being in place for display and window promotions.

Feng Shui specialist Karen Ann Tompkins says that each room, building and furniture arrangement creates an environment that is nurturing or harming. She will tell the Oct. 12 Fort Worth IABC luncheon meeting how to use the Oriental art of self-empowerment to "design your life" via simple changes to the home or workplace. RSVP to Shelley Buttgen, (817) 569-4511.

You like exclusives? Try this: Ex-Channel 8 news king Tracy Rowlett, now anchor-in-exile at Channel 11, will go behind the scenes at Belo for the SPJ meeting Nov. 16. It will be his first public appearance since waving Belo 'bye. ... The band FoxWell made another of its very public appearances at the September meeting. Never sounded better. For the 10 folks who said they were coming but couldn't make it, sorry, but we have to bill for the meal. ... Our program on the Wedgwood tragedy couldn't wait, so the conflict-of-interest Belo-Mavericks panel intended for October was bumped. It likely will be rescheduled.

The chapter established the Jerry Flemmons Scholarship last year. Donations may be sent to P.O. Box 3212, Fort Worth 76113 ... More questions: Ever wonder why S-T people dominate the "Comings & Goings" section? Why Alex Burton keeps showing up for his authoring and now his intonation and diction skills? Because the S-T's Jodi Hudson gathers the newspaper material, that's why, and because Burton keeps sending himself in. There's room for you, too.